On Genre: Writing Between the Lines
A brief craft essay
It’s early June, and the summer heat has arrived to New York City. The fan is on and whirling. Yesterday night, a thunderstorm rolled through, sudden and intense, and then rolled on. May and its balmy spring air already feels far away.
I skipped sending you one of these in early May because I was busy graduating from my MFA. We crossed over from April into May right after I turned in my thesis and right before I read from it onstage. Saying no in April really helped me reach those finish lines, punctually, calmly, and confidently, like the tortoise. And then once I’d passed them and celebrated the end of the race, I needed a nap, like the hare. Now that I’m rested, I’m getting back to my writing, to this newsletter, to my commitment to send one a month.
Friends have kindly asked to read from my thesis, so I’ve decided to share more of it here, too. Below is the opening essay of my thesis collection, Omens, Curses & Joys. It’s a craft essay and an introduction, a welcome note to the reader. I wrote the first draft of this my second semester of graduate school, when things were starting to click and fall into place after a period of writers block. I workshopped that much longer initial draft with a professor, then set it down for a long time. When I picked it back up this spring, I thought I might toss the whole thing out, told myself I didn’t need a craft essay after all. There were too many ideas in it, and it wasn’t working, and I was frustrated I hadn’t left it in better shape. But then I took a breath and I just whittled out the parts that mattered most. Here’s the remaining essay-sculpture: a time capsule of my years in the MFA, and my evolving relationship to genre.
On Genre: Writing Between the Lines
My first spring semester here, once the daffodils had started to bloom and we’d made it past the halfway mark, a prospective student visited our craft class. We each shared our names, pronouns, and genres. As writers, that’s how we introduce ourselves. Who we are, and what we write.
“Hi, David, second and final year, fiction.”
“Melisse, second year non-fiction, I’m writing a memoir.”
“Siobhan, I’m working on a novel about ballerinas.”
“Hello, I’m Cléo, this is my first year. I’m enrolled in fiction, but I really write both fiction and non-fiction. Or, you know, I write a kind of auto-fiction, like I try to write fiction but can only fictionalize so much…” I said in a hurry with a small sense of embarrassment. At that point, I still felt self-conscious and unsure at times about introducing myself as a writer. Or rather through my writing. In elementary school, my library had a poster that read: Fiction = Made Up, Non-Fiction = Not Made Up. The mnemonic device I was taught was F for Fake, NF for Not-Fake. But I’m terrible at making things up on the page, and I don’t want to be found out. So where do I fall, then? How should I introduce myself and my writing?
We kept circling around the round table in the Stone Room, not pausing long enough for me to linger on these thoughts, nor long enough for anyone else to notice my discomfort.
“Hey, I’m Maeve, I write short stories and I’m revising a novel right now.”
“Romy, I’m here for non-fiction on paper, but I’m actually also writing a novel about ballerinas.” She and Siobhan exchanged a nod of approval.
“I’m Nurit, this is my last semester and I’m enrolled in speculative fiction but I write poetry and fiction and I’ve actually never even taken a speculative class, I realize.” We laughed then, because that’s the joke that’s been building. Genre doesn’t matter. Not here at least, in this classroom or on this campus. At the end of the day, we’re all just writers.
The next week, the same routine. Another visiting student, another quick round of introductions. “Hi, I’m Sarah Jane, second year, speculative fiction, but I think my writing can mostly be considered straight literary fiction.”
“Hey, I’m working on a weird novel, but today, because of our homework assignment, I feel,” Alice paused for a dramatic flourish, “like a poet.” We laughed in unison, because again, that’s the punch line to the joke we all know. Genre is only what you feel it to be, is only as definitive as you let it be. And yesterday, we wrote poems, so today, we are poets.
So why does the distinction matter? When, or to whom, does genre matter? Why do I translate some experiences in fiction and others in nonfiction? I have been asking myself different permutations of these questions for the better part of three years now. I haven’t reached a satisfying answer, and every time I write something new, I have to start again.
Part of the reason why I keep circling around these questions: I’m not good at starting from scratch. So I start with a scene from life instead, a seed of experience. And then the more each piece develops, the further it gets from that original seed of truth, and it matters less and less what that seed is, or where it is still visible in the current version. Honestly, I almost forget what the seed is, after having spent so long with its fruits.
I am trying to make sense of my writing process, but it is a shifting thing. And to whom does it matter but me?
Here’s what I can say: One feels like carving out a story truth, the other feels like building one up out of clay. If a written text is a finished sculpture, fiction and nonfiction are two different methods of sculpting.
Fiction is hand building with clay. The sculptor has to start from nothing, from scratch, and has to put material together to construct a shape. Each piece of clay is incrementally added. The author-sculptor is guided by feel, by touch, not always by a vision of what the final product should look like. The writing process is one of construction: of a world, of its characters, piece by piece.
Nonfiction is carved from stone. It is carved out of the marble of reality. A situation happens, an experience exists, and the author-sculptor chisels out a story from it. Superfluous details fall aside as the author-sculptor chooses to leave them out, to focus on the center, the subject at hand. The process of writing nonfiction is one of chipping away, of deconstruction, and it arrives at a truth that is already there, waiting to be uncovered.
At least this is how I think of it these days, as I write in one genre or the other.
Another thing about the nonfiction sculpture: in the process of hacking the essay out of the rock, the excess which falls away is sometimes forgotten. It was true, but if it doesn’t make it into the sculpture, it can be lost. Where does it go, if it doesn’t fit into the essay?
—
This spring semester, near the end of my time in the MFA, we had a prospective student visit my craft class again. Again my friends and I introduced ourselves with names and genres. When it was my turn, I said: “Hi, I’m Cléo, I’m enrolled in fiction, but I write on the edge between fiction and non-fiction.” And it’s true. That’s where I spend my time. Walking delicately on the tight rope between the two poles. I’ve learned to claim it as its own space, instead of just an in-between before I pick a lane. I’m staying in this non-defined space. I like it here.
… or so I said at the end of my MFA, at least. We’ll see what comes next, what genre I gravitate towards and write in most moving forward. I’m curious to find out - and I’ll keep you posted here.
Your separation of fiction/non-fiction, as far as a writing process, is precisely why I've spent the past 25-30 years figuring out how to write non-fiction like it was fiction. I guess because I don't read fiction and have never seen much challenge in making shit up out of whole cloth, haha. I find it much more of a challenge to take what happened to me in reality and craft a liminal space out of it where you're transported straight into it just like Blood Meridian. However, I suppose I did lead the life I've lived partially so I would have fodder to write about later. There's something pure about bleeding and losing everything, in order to earn the stories you write!
Writing between the lines is where the personal essay actually lives, I find. Half my stuff is somewhere between memoir and thinking out loud, and the moment I try to make it sit properly in one genre it goes stiff on me. The good bits always happen in the gap. Nice piece.